When the philosopher Diogenes stood outside a brothel shouting “A beautiful prostitute is like poisoned honey, a beautiful prostitute is like poisoned honey,” the men entering the house threw coins at him in an attempt to silence the protest. After enough time, Diogenes had collected enough coins to then enter the house himself…
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“Breaking news…”
There are twenty one legal brothels in the United States of America.
Frank owns a majority stake in three.
Not this particular location, but he’s got eyes everywhere.
“…here’s an updated death toll for the tsunami in Sri Lanka,” says the closed captions on the wall mounted television.
Throughout the years, establishments like these have gone by an assortment of different nicknames.
Dens of iniquity.
Dens of vice.
There’s your bordellos and your brothels.
You had the cathouse, bawdy-house, sporting house and your houses-of-ill-repute.
Or you’ve got this place, what has since been rebranded as a sort of Ranch.
Not to be confused with gentlemen’s clubs, strip clubs, or certain massage parlors.
And unlike those seedy rub & tugs, where an uncomfortable negotiation about an extra hidden fee, can score a guy a half-hearted handjob from some elderly Asian woman who can barely speak your language, everything here is done by the books.
It’s all federally registered and taxed. There are business licenses. Every girl is fingerprinted and background-checked each and every quarter.
Armed security guards are always on hand.
There’s full time staff members called friction monitors, whose sole purpose is to do listen-in’s and welfare checks in a pattern of random intervals. This is done first and foremost for and the ladies safety, but also to ensure there’s no back-room hush hush keep it on the low, low renegotiations taking place between the staff and the clients.
This is the real deal, folks.
Every girl gets mandatory testing for STDs and STIs every seven days. Statistically, making them the cleanest women on the planet.
“After the break we’ll interview a woman who just opened up a yoga studio for house pets…” says the news anchor who appears as if she bathes in bronzer and applies her makeup in the dark while trying to channel her inner rodeo clown.
Most, if not all of the venues are themed. Everything from their wild-west saloon origins, to a more contemporary club atmosphere.
All of them are in Nevada. But only in select rural areas, away from the larger cities. Deep out in the desert down south. Further north, way up in the woods.
Middle of nowhere. Center of everywhere.
Contrary to popular belief, prostitution is illegal in Clark county, where the city of Las Vegas lays. First time offenders face a $1000 fine and/or six months in jail, all of which can be taken off your record with a hefty surcharge and contractual obligation to attend a series of HIV/AIDS awareness meetings.
And unlike those monolithic mega structures occupying the Strip, which are demolished again and again, only to then be rebuilt bigger and better, these buildings here are protected.
You could lay a map of the old Pony Express over where these places stand and have a better idea about why they sit where they do.
We’ve convinced ourselves that to make something better, we must destroy what it used to be.
The historical society reckons otherwise.
Much like the ladies who work inside, the existing structure can only receive upgrades and add-ons.
Facelifts and makeovers.
Turns out.
Nobody can really replace what’s there, only build upon the foundation that already exists.
“Cuckolding could be good for your relationship.” says the closed captions.
The woman sitting beside you at the mini bar is the venue’s proprietor, traditionally known as the Madam, though anymore, they’re mostly just called shift managers.
“I’m Miss Anne,” she says.
Buy you a drink?
“Save the wooing for the women,” she says, then pours herself a shot of Jack Daniels.
“That’s a gas, Susan. Haha… In other news, a mother drowned her five children…” says the other news anchor with the chiseled jaw line and obvious hair plugs.
Looking for a particular girl.
She cocks her head, retrieves a single PallMall from a silver cigarette case,“Well, I’d say you’re in the right place, sugar.” She lights up, takes a deep pull and blows smoke towards the hovering harem.“You a first-timer?”
You could say that, yeah.
She smiles and stands to press a large red button labeled Showtime, “How ‘bout a proper peak at the menu, then?”
*ding ding ding*
Time for a line up.
The click-clack rattle of heels hitting hardwood begins competing with an old vintage jukebox stationed in the corner, playing those old school classics we’ve all heard a thousand times over, but can never really remember the lyrics the right way.
The girls strut across the display room with the grace of ballroom dancers and the grins of used-car salesmen who are desperate to make quota.
All but one, that is.
“Puberty blockers are the new norm.” Says an advertising campaign using children chasing bubbles in a field full of hay.
You wouldn’t think it, but some of these women are PhD candidates and others are tenured professors. Some are gathering field data, while others call this their vacations. These are fifth year Med students and registered nurses.
Some teach at elementary schools and spend their summers here.
Others drop their kids off at daycare and come up for the afternoon.
People say nobody really wants to do this. Some of these girls beg to differ. People call them victims, but the fact of the matter is there’s a couple thousand girls applying for the position, every month of the year.
We are all just a few unfortunate circumstances away from being stripped of our humanity.
“Are you using the correct pronouns?” From the television.
On most of the walls, black and white portraits of women wearing bonnets hang framed with ornate wooden paneling. Behind them, the wallpaper looks like it hasn’t been updated since before most of the staff was born. A blotched, smeared stucco pattern, hued in a pea soup green. There’s ice-sickle Christmas lights dangling down from the rafters, collecting acrid dust in vain.
Miss Anne stands and presents her right hand palm up, beckoning towards the ladies the way models showcase a washer and dryer combo-set on daytime TV gameshows. She says, “There’s your blondes, brunettes, redheads. We got your older, younger, your thick and thin.”
“Hey, sweetie. I’m Candy.” Some lady named Candy says.
“Are you suffering from male pattern baldness? Don’t worry! With our new technology…” the screen spells.
Miss Anne continues, “There’s your feisty, your friendly. Your slutty, meek.”
“I’m Susie,” says another woman, as she winks.
“…school girls, librarians,” Miss Anne says, “Leather, lace. Bondage, bonding.”
A lady with curly blond hair and thigh-high neon yellow fishnets runs her index finger across your arm, “Name’s Rose.”
“We’ve got your Asian persuasion, your dark chocolate, your girl next door, your prim and proper prom queen. Whatever you’re in the market for, we’re a one stop shop.” says Miss Anne.
Everything that you see here exists, but is not really there. Not really real.
The human connection, distilled to a financial transaction.
These are the best actors you’ll ever see in your life. Fake orgasms. Forced smiles. Fun loving personalities and charismatic demeanors.
Wearing masks, all day, everyday.
After a while, if one isn’t careful, the person they used to be fades away and they become the persona they used to project.
“Be aware, if you have a specific lady in mind you may need to book her in advance. Some have set shifts. Some only do specific days. Some are appointment only basis. They’re human too.” says Miss Anne.
“Hey, big boy.” says another girl who smells like a mixture of cocoa body butter and a spent lifetime’s supply of Capri lights.
No sign of Baby Girl.
Any locals?
“Even the locals ain’t local out here,” Miss Anne says as she pours two more shots, drinks both, then fills both glasses again and pushes one in front of you.
Amongst the group, a heroin chic’ mid-twenty something stares down at her exposed toes, with the nails painted jet black pushing out through the end of a pair of Manolo Blahniks from Neiman Marcus’ Spring collection.
Low cut. Gunmetal grey. Size 5.5W.
The look on her face is a combination of when you realize the veterinary clinic is calling and know that your dog is dead and when your father forgot to pick you up when it was his weekend with you.
She’s wearing a baseball t-shirt that covers half her arms, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album cover is screen printed on the front.
While twelve sets of eyes size you up, hers are the only pair that averts. While twelve captains of industry reduce you to a dollar sign, one couldn’t care less.
She’s the one.
“You sure?” Miss Anne says.
She’s the one.
Yes.
“Destiny. Look alive, girl.” says Miss Anne.
Groans and shrugs and tongue clicks flutter, while Destiny sighs and raises her head to meet your gaze.
Powdered over pock marks are plastered across each sunken cheek, both of which struggle to form what most people would call a smile. “Hi.” she says and then reaches out to take your hand, her touch cold and vacant. “Follow me.”
She walks you by a separate room that has letters illuminated in bright fluorescent red spelling ATM, and she says, “It starts at four digits.”
Not a problem.
Through the window, a girl in a Peppermint Patty sundress is pouring yellow liquid on a perimeter fence. A tradition that dates back to Wild-West times. The idea being that the horses passing by would smell the pheromones from the piss of the ladies within and direct their rider towards the establishment.
Towards the action.
“You need this,” Destiny says.
The long hallway has doors dueling each other from opposite sides, the same corridor that’s been getting trampled upon since the men who typically walk down them now, used to get their jollies from the lingerie section of a holiday Sears catalog.
“This is us,” Destiny says, opening a door labeled 6.
Inside the sixth door sits a bed well weathered but made to perfection. Plush pillows pile above a comforter sporting crippled Cherubs who shoot arrows through crumpled hearts.
“You’re safe,” she says and closes the door.
People talk shit about these girls but they are harder workers and tougher individuals than most could ever dream to be.
Battle hardened invincibility.
They have seen and done things that they'll never share but will always remember. The sort of stuff that most adults have to take drugs to forget about and that children don’t even have words for yet.
“You’re loved,” she says.
Anything you can think of, it happens here.
You got guys flying in from across the globe just to pay a months wages to get kicked in the balls for an hour by a towering transvestite named Jeff. Jeff used to be a stunt double for some big A-lister in tinsel town but says that he finds hooking more spiritually rewarding.
Ball busting, they call it.
There’s the guy who spends half his paycheck to buy her a carton of Camels and then proceeds to lay on his back with his mouth agape. She’ll spend hours chain-smoking the cigarettes, using his mouth as an ashtray, blowing smoke into his face and then extinguishing every single one of the butts on his genitals.
The human ashtray.
There’s wet jobs, scat parties, and pegging. There’s man babies and voyeurs. Dom’s and subs.
There’s your guy who shows up with a carrier crate full of baby chickens and six inch stiletto heels in her size.
They call that one Crushing.
Looking for a friend of yours.
“I don’t have any friends.” she says
She takes off her shirt and shows where he stuck her the first time. Where he dabbed Sky vodka over the vein and plunged in the needle and told her that love is dead. Money is the new God, he told her.
You don’t remember me, do you?
She points to a device mounted in the corner, and says “Tell me what you want, baby. But remember God is listening too.” She hands you a yellow notepad and a colored pencil. Arabian blue.
You write Baby Girl.
Paper thin lips with scribbled on skank gloss say, “You need a good little girl?”
Don’t let the looks fool you. These girls are harder than steel. Slick as oil spills and driven as the snow.
More like a bad one, you say.
Not here with Frank, looking for Amy. Baby Girl, you write.
Her face melts from snowballs to sizzling, then morphs from suspicious to scared.
Most of us know that the fire is beautiful. Not enough understand how bad it can burn you if you get too close.
“So you’re into bad girls, huh?” Destiny says, “I may be able to help you out.” She picks up the pencil and writes down an address.
I can do the same. Help you, that is.
You write down, If you want out, call this number. Lay ten bills on top.
She reads your note and laughs, “But then who would ever love me?”
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*All rights reserved to The Killers. I do not own, nor have agency, monetary authority, or rights held within in accordance with any copyright laws.